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Soon I Can Say Anything I Want
Bite me
According to the interwebz, and they’d know, my 16-year-old cat is 80 in human years. So I guess that means the old girl’s got seniority around here. Not hard to figure that out from the way she is catered to by her younger roommates. Yes. We are the youngsters of the household at 69 and 63 and, oh yes, we are well trained by our furry elder…even AleXander who is still bewildered that anyone would willingly have an animal in the apartment.
We recently watched Vanessa Redgrave — as “Mrs. Dalloway” in the 1997 adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel — muse about how the young suicide will remain young while she and her friends have grown old. And will grow older. How often have I, too, whispered to the rapidly vanishing moment, stay, stay, stay?
It occurs to me that during our past year and a half trapped in our Hollywood Square Zoom boxes we, my friends and I, have been getting older. As we begin to see each other in 3D again, I’m shocked by this. Are they?
They are kind enough not to say so.
Getting to the point of no longer being “older” but being actually and inarguably “old” is taking me by surprise. Yes, it’s still subjective. My darling mentor, Anita, who passed in 2020 scoffed from her 84 years that I was a mere baby. But this baby no longer seems to be perceived as…